Whose Burden is it to Recycle Computers? 553
bostons asks: "California places the financial burden of dealing with the electronic waste on consumers, charging a $6 to $10 disposal fee on every computer and television purchased. Maine puts the onus on manufacturers, demanding they pay the full cost of recycling their computers or televisions and pick up a share of the recycling tab for products of unknown origin. Starting next year, Maryland will require manufacturers to offer free computer take-back programs or pay the state a fee. Which do you think is the most effective and appropriate option?"
Whichever way...we pay (Score:2, Insightful)
Knowing state governors, they will probably charge us at POS, then go ahead and bill manufacturers, who will in turn put the tab on our bills.
Oh i can forsee it something like this:
Manufacturers obviously will NOT abosord the charge. they will load it onto the cost.
I don't mean to call you naive.. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:old pit by the highway (Score:3, Insightful)
Free market burden on disposal (Score:5, Insightful)
Therefore, if manufacturers have the burden, they will have to charge customers indirectly by increasing purchase price (after all, customers pay for everything in the end).
And if manufacturers carry the direct burden, they will also have the desire to lower disposal costs. Instead of a flat $6 for disposal costs, the manufacturer will want to lower it as close to zero as possible.
This becomes a win-win. It costs the consumer in the end (as it always does), but manufacturers have a strong incentive to minimize the disposal costs.
At the end of the day, I'll speculate that this could be a profit center for the manufacturer - the resale of whole components and quality recycled raw materials could wind up making them money.
Easy Answer (Score:2, Insightful)
It's not about cost (Score:3, Insightful)
That said, I am reminded of the fact that, in Texas at least, places like JiffyLube and any place that changes oil are required to accept old motor oil for proper disposal at no charge. This is a burden on these oil changing places but the purpose is to benefit the evironment, not to "tax" people. This approach is definitely not a tax and has the least amount of bureaucratic overhead. (The benefit to the oil-changing people is that because the outsiders still need to dispose of their used oil properly or face heavy fines if they are caught which means it is less convenient to change their own oil and since they need to make the trip to the lube shop anyway, they just might get more business in the process.)
With that as my own mental image of what an appropriate solution might be, a mandatory "take-back" program is the only way I think is appropriate. Then the sellers can do whatever they [legally] need to do in order to dispose of them properly. This would accomplish the main purpose, which is to decrease the amount of this waste in landfills. Taxing is not appropriate in this case.
Re:Prepaid (Score:2, Insightful)
The customer ALWAYS pays (Score:3, Insightful)
One way or another, the customer is always the one who pays, it is just a question of "how much?" and "when?"
My preference is that the fee be levied as far down the "value chain" as possible - probably at point of sale, like it is for the states with recycle fees on soda containers.
Charging the fee at point of sale does a couple of good things:
1) The customer knows what they are paying for, it isn't hidden away in the total price. This knowledge helps to prevent the fees being raised as an arbitrary form of taxation - income tax gets taken out of most people's paychecks before they ever even see the money, thus obscuring the direct impact of the tax. I wish to avoid that happening with any new taxes.
2) If the fees were directly assesed to the distributor or manufacturer, then they would be inflated with each step in the process just as the price of the system is. In effect, paying the fee at point of sale is like paying the "wholesale" cost but charging the manufacturer the fee would result in it being marked up to "retail" pricing by the time the end-consumer pays for it, possibly even doubling the original "wholesale" fee level for no added benefit to the environment or the consumer.
It's 10 friggin dollars (Score:2, Insightful)
It HAS to be free (Score:5, Insightful)
The conclusion seems obvious. Hell, I don't even have incentive to volunteer my time to fish them out if I will suffer the insult of paying to deposit the fruits of my good citizenship.
back in October it was a bad idea (Score:2, Insightful)
living here in Osaka has been fun for the last ten years.
EXCEPT for when the government wrote the law that said that the consumer must pay the cost of recycling air conditioners, washers, dryers, and now computers.
The reason why it has not been fun is because in the beautiful park nearby - and in the corners of some of the rice fields! - there are piles of dishwashing machines, refrigerators and old "wapro"s (japanese word processors). The city governement becomes responsible after several months of no one claiming them but then the tax payers money gets used for the disposal.
You see, the problematic point is not so much that the little sticker on new machines is there to show that you have prepaid (hence adding to the price of new machines) BUT that all the old machines are levyed for a fee to recycle them.
Many people don't want to spend 7000 yen to get rid of their old air conditioner so they junk it.
Same thing may happen to computers too.
Who cares!? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Recycling != Disposal (Score:4, Insightful)
You're confused because you believe something which is not true, namely:
In a perfect world where all costs are properly accounted, recycling would be profitable and end users would be turning in their goods to recoup the cost tied up in no longer useful items. However, one of the reasons we get our copper from Chile is so that we can avoid proper cost of mining it. We're essentially disintermediating the proper environmental, social and labor costs that copper mining in the US would incur. In this sense, we get the copper whithout the side effects of not paying those costs. The Chileans will, eventually. Some corporations and local governments stateside have actaully come to the conclusion that it's actually cheaper to do this stuff abroad than deal with these problems over the long term at home. The hard rock mining industry is a premier example of this and because computers require so many rare earth resources and energy to produce, they're essentially a huge black market of hidden costs that somebody somewhere is stuck with.
Item deposits are not a great way to deal with this problem, but they are one way of dealing with them. The great side effect is that you get the underprivilaged to tidy up the place as they scour your neighborhood for dumped deposit items.
Before you get all huffy at the last remark, please note that it was in the vein of The Onion's story about increasing the bottle deposit to aid the indigent.